The Shadow of Wings

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The children came running toward him, laughing and shouting up from the lakeside to the spot on the grassy h I where he lay reading; and as Dr. John Donaldson saw what was clutched in the hand of his youngest son, he felt an involuntary tremor of disgust.

“Look, John! Look what Paul caught!” That was his oldest, Joanne. She was nine, a brunette rapidly growing tan on this vacation trip. Behind her came David, eight, fair-haired and lobster-skinned, and in the rear was Paul, the six-year-old, out of breath and gripping in his still pudgy hand a small green frog.

Donaldson shoved his book—Haley, Studies in Morphological Linguistics—to one side and sat up. Paul thrust the frog almost into his face. “I saw it hop, John—and I caught it!” He pantomimed the catch with his free hand.

“I saw him do it,” affirmed David.

The frog’s head projected between thumb and first finger; two skinny webbed feet dangled free at the other end of Paul’s hand, while the middle of the unfortunate batrachian was no doubt being painfully compressed by the small clammy hand. Donaldson felt pleased by Paul’s display of coordination, unusual for a six-year-old. But at the same time he wished the boy would take the poor frog back to the lake and let it go.

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